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Age Is Just a Number — Right Now, 2,998 for One Person in Particular

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Age Is Just a Number — Right Now, 2,998 for One Person in Particular

By Dean Robinson July 8, 2011 4:44 pmJuly 8, 2011 4:44 pm

Nick Laham/Getty Images

After four games with the Yankees since coming back from the disabled list, Derek Jeter is 4-for-18. So those four hits mean he just needs another three to get to . . . the number of hits Eduardo Nunez had in his last two games filling in for Jeter.

This isn’t prelude to Jeter bashing. (Though if you want some of that, sort of, help yourself.) Jeter’s getting 3,000 hits — only two more needed to reach that non-Nunez milestone — is greatness, a really big deal. And you can’t blame him for wanting to play, or for putting himself in the lineup — Joe Girardi does that. But 3,000 is a big deal for Girardi, too, as it is for everyone in the Yankees organization. It makes perfect sense that Jeter would get to step right back into and keep his spot at the top of the batting order — even if the Yankees were 14-4 in his absence and are 1-3 and no longer in first place since his return.

Still, it’s a little surprising to hear Girardi, known as a newfangled sort, with that notebook of his filled with stats and matchups, sound like such an old-timey, eternal-verities-of-baseball guy when he suggests that Jeter will eventually revert to past glorious form and deserves to stay in the daily leadoff spot, no matter how well he’s actually hitting. (See Tyler Kepner: “Jeter Is Back, But He’s Not the Same.”) It’s almost like he didn’t read the magazine’s recent cover story by Michael Sokolove about Jeter and what happens to elite ballplayers as they age! (Say it ain’t so, Joe.)

One of the implicit questions Sokolove’s article raises is how long an elite baseball player’s career should last. Probably not as long as it usually does, given that peaks tend to come in the mid-20s. But everyone wants to extend a wonderful career. So maybe baseball people ought to think harder about extending some players’ careers at the other end, instead — at the beginning, rather than the end.
Exhibit A: Bryce Harper, the wunderkind that Sports Illustrated put on its cover two years ago, when Harper was 16 years old. Last year Harper was the No. 1 pick in the baseball draft, and this year he batted .389 in more than a dozen spring-training games with the Washington Nationals. Even as he was learning a new position (going from catcher to outfield) and getting used to contact lenses, he continued to hit well in the minor leagues this spring. By mid-May, his batting average was .366, and he had 31 R.B.I. and 9 home runs and 6 steals — which is when Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo announced that Harper would not be called up to the major leagues this year, even when rosters expand in September. Yes, it’s minor-league pitching Harper was demolishing, but it was only May! Not to mention, the Nats are not exactly world beaters already filled with Jeters.

That’s when a fascinating column appeared in The Washington Post, comparing Harmon Killebrew, a one-time teenage prodigy who recently died at the age of 74, with Harper. The fact that Killebrew managed to hit 573 home runs and make it into the Hall of Fame was taken as evidence that the Washington Senators’ policy of keeping him in the minors full time until he was 23 was the right choice — and the right model for the Nats to follow with Harper. Rizzo was quoted as saying: “Harper needs his time in the minor leagues. He needs to show these guys” — the Nats’ major leaguers — “that he has paid his dues. He still has things to learn, on and off the field.”

Does that hoary baseball philosophy of “paying your dues” really make sense? You either play well enough to justify playing or you don’t. But you need to play to show you can play. Who’s to say Killebrew would not have thrived had he been in the majors sooner or that Harper might not too? (Admittedly, Harper has attracted some attention for dubious behavior. But that makes him different from so many older pros how?) Seems to me Killebrew left some home runs out there. He could’ve gotten to the 600-homer milestone by getting in his hacks earlier.

I happen to have tickets to Saturday’s game between the Yankees and Tampa Bay: back in March, I bought two games this season from a colleague who has season tickets. I’d sure like to be there in person when Jeter gets his 3,000th. It would be a thrill. I don’t expect it to happen, though — on some of the rare occasions when I’ve been to Yankees’ games in recent years, I’ve managed to miss A-Rod’s 500th and 600th home runs by one game each. (Worse, it seems like I always have to witness a Yankee pitcher getting shelled instead.) I figure Jeter will get his two hits tonight, the night before I get there. If that’s how things go, O.K., — but do you think it’s too much to ask to see Eduardo Nunez go 4-for-4?

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…